Page 80 of On Broken Bonds

The uncertainty.

For a little while, I'd convinced myself they had managed to escape. Maybe they'd fought off the slavers and fled into the woods. Maybe they'd be back any minute.

But they never came back.

I can still remember standing in the middle of that wrecked house feeling…. empty. I remember the reality slowly settling over me. My family was gone. My mother. My father. My sister and brother.

Gone.

And I hadn't been there. I hadn't protected them.

The rage that followed wasn't clean or heroic. It wasn't the sort of anger people tell stories about afterward. It felt like drowning. Like something inside me had snapped.

Then darkness. Fragments. Broken pieces of a story I can never fully put back together.

The next clear memory is waking up naked in the woods. Alone. My family still gone.

I don't remember how long I'd been unconscious after my berserker state. Hours. Maybe days. I only remember the hollow feeling in my chest when I realized they were still gone. All that destruction. All that rage. All that blood.

And I'd accomplished nothing.

The memory twists inside me now.

Good. I need it. I need the helplessness. The fury. The guilt. I need to remember what it felt like standing in that empty house knowing I'd failed the people I loved most.

Now Thorian hits me again.

Pain explodes through my jaw, snapping my head sideways. I taste blood immediately. Something hard lands in the dirt beside me. A tooth. I stare at it for a second. Funny. I wonder if that grows back.

Around us, the world is growing darker. The red and orange light is bleeding out of the sky. Shadows stretch across the swamp. The water has become a sheet of black glass, and a low, mournful cry echoes across the distance.

It should scare me. The approaching night should scare me. The swamp should scare me. Thorian's punches should make me angry. Instead, all I can see is that empty house. All I can hear is the silence. And somehow, even that isn't enough.

Maybe it's because I know he isn't actually trying to hurt me. Maybe it's because I understand why we're doing this. Or maybe it's because, despite his permanent scowl and tendency to solve problems with violence, I've come to like Thorian.

Whatever the reason, the punches aren't working.

The latest one sends me sprawling into the dirt. Blood fills my mouth. My head rings. I lie there for a second, staring up at the darkening sky, waiting for the familiar loss of control.

Nothing. No transformation. No beast. Just pain.

"Damn it," Thorian mutters.

"Maybe we should stop," Nyx says.

I crack one eye open. She's standing between us now, looking worried. Not annoyed. Not impatient. Worried.

For me.

"We can't stop," Thorian says.

"We can't keep doing this either."

"We don't have another choice."

His voice is quiet. Matter-of-fact. Which somehow makes the words worse. Because he's right. The swamp isn't going anywhere. The night is coming. And if we stay here, we'll die.

Nyx looks toward the water. Toward the distant platforms. Toward the darkness creeping across the sky. Then she sighs, a long unhappy sound that seems to carry all of our frustration with it.